“I do, in fact, play chess.”
She held up her hand, palm out, into the small ring of light cast by the tiny candle stub on their table. “Non. I cannot bear it. Merels instead, mayhap?”
He looked surprised. “Dice?”
“Have I offended? Perhaps Whoop and Hide, then, like small children. I shall hide, and you will never find me.”
He gave a low laugh. “I could find you, lass.”
Shivers danced through her belly, hot, trembly things.
“Wales?” she said, taking her turn guessing land-of-origin, but her goal was to distract.
She was rather sure he knew exactly what she was doing, but he answered simply enough. “Never.”
“Edinburgh?”
“Near. Upon a time.”
“Ah, so I thought. I hear it in you still.”
“The North has a way of doing that.” One of his fingertips slid idly over the tankard of ale in front of him.
A group of men appeared at the doorway, cloaked, their wooden soles clacking hard over wooden threshold. She felt rather than saw Jamie’s attention narrow in on them, like an archer taking aim. Then he subsided, but she had no way to explain how she knew this, since he hadn’t moved a muscle. It was unnerving, to have a man ignite dangerous intent like a candle flame, then extinguish it completely.
An off-tune song of ribald and lewd acts broke out in the far corner. Eva sat back, considered the tankard, then quickly lifted it and took a drink. Grimacing, she set it down at once.
“The ale here is quite bad,” he said, watching her.
“All ale is bad,” she agreed, leaning forward. “Why do you drink it?”
He pursed his lips, as if he’d never considered the question before.
“You should taste the wine from the duchy of Burgundy,” she said firmly.
One of those dark, curved eyebrows lifted. “Ought I?”
“Assuredly.” She folded her hands and leaned into them, pressing her ribs against the thick edge of the table, calling the image up in her mind. “I could tell you of a valley where the grapes grow—we could climb through the vineyards—and the air, ’tis ever hot, and the dirt cool between your toes, and at the top of the hill, the land bumps away below you as if there is something living beneath the crust of the fields. Like a pie. No, a giant stretching under his sheets, shifting his bones. Ah, and the grapes. They are a most rare thing.”
He was watching her, his eyes shadowed. The candle flickered on the table between them. “Rare,” he echoed. “What is your name, mistress?”
“Chivalry requires you speak first, sir.”
“I am not chivalrous.”
She waved her hand. “With me, you shall be. You will find it inevitable.” She arched an eyebrow. “Your name, sir.”
“Jamie.”
“Jamie. Jamie,” she whispered.
It felt like years since she’d spoken a person’s name. Perhaps it had been. There had been no one but her and Father Peter and her charge, Roger, all these years.
And now this dangerous man, dangerous not only because of the blades strapped across his body, which of course made him mightily dangerous, but because of what happened to her belly when his mouth curved into a faint, lopsided smile as she repeated his name two times.
“And yours, mistress?”
She hesitated. “Eva.”
“Eva, Eva,” he murmured, just as she had done with his name, except there was absolutely no way she’d infused such latent sensuality into two murmured words.
The same two words.
Oh, shivers and shifting bits of land.
“Do you not,” she asked, “find it most odd that here we are, wanting both the thing that is the same—that only one can have, so of course we will fight—and yet we talk of little nothings?”
His bench came tipping forward, four wooden legs onto the floor. His hand, gloved in leather midknuckle, dropped to the table near hers, by the candle, the brightest thing in the whole dingy tavern, his scarred hand beside her pale one.
“Most odd,” he said. “I haven’t a little nothing in my life.”
“Well. Now we have this.” She patted the tabletop between them, the bare inch between their fingers, the hot candle, and the cold air.
“Now, this,” he agreed in a low voice. He was looking at her hands. “What have you done to your fingernails?”
“They are painted.” She curled her fingertips into her fist, withdrawing them from view. “It is naught. A habit that passes the time.”
“They looked like drawings.”
“That is because they are.”
“They looked like vines. Let me see.”
She slid her fisted hand off the table entirely. “Vines. And flowers.”
He looked up. “How?”
“With little brushes no wider than a grass blade.”
“That is . . . remarkable.”
She peered at him. “I do not wish to shock you, sir, but with your interest in little vines, you do not seem the sort to hunt priests.”
He might have been crafted from marble, for all he moved or showed response. “No?”
She shook her head. “Let me be clear: to look at you, one could hardly think you did anything but hunt for priests.” Something shifted on his face faintly. A smile. “But hardly do you feel like a priest ought to worry.”
“That would be a foolish priest.”
She nodded, absorbing. “Then I cannot let you have him, you must know this.”
Again, the marble response. She did not like speaking with marble.
“You think I jest,” she said sharply.
“I think nothing of the kind,” he said in that low, rumbly way he had. She already knew the sort of way he had. “I think you resolute and dogged, and when you do a thing, Eva, I suspect ’tis a thing forever done.”
She caught her breath as it went rushing out, disguising it as a soft laugh. The way her name had sounded on his tongue, it was not proper. “This is entirely not so. The things I do are very small and matter to no one. I am committed to nothing.”
He looked at her. “What about the priest?”
Well. She would prefer to speak with marble than be interrogated. She narrowed her eyes. “How ever did you come to hunt priests?”
“I was given to it,” he said, his voice pitched so low it almost vibrated. She’d imagine marble to have a higher range. His was more like earth and rocks and the things that lay beneath.
“Do you know you are a dreadful liar?” he inquired, sitting back, watching her.
She wiped her hand across the table, as if sweeping up crumbs. “Indeed. How could one not know such a thing? I lie so that one knows it, but that seems a less dangerous thing to give away than the truth, no?”
The smile that had been haunting his beautiful features faded. Stern again, like a wasp.
“What do you know of the curé?” she demanded. Did this one have the slightest notion what a great man Father Peter was, what riches would be taken from this world if anything, ever, happened to him?
“I know his use of color,” Jamie replied, looking at the candle flame. “Green and red and a Hell-pit black. He introduced me to tigers, in the margins of a page. I was six. I could have stared at the creature for days. My mother said I told her I heard it roar.”
She gave a small laugh, although it was more a small outbreath with sound. It was much warmer than the surrounding air. “The Everoot Psalter. So, you know of his work.”
“Aye. His writings, his illuminations.”
“Dangerous things, no?”
“Aye.”
“England’s king does not think so good of these things.”
“John does not think so well of them,” he agreed.
“But you do.”
His eyes never left hers, answer enough. The door to the tavern swung open again, letting cold, wet air in.
“’Tis passing sad, then,” she mused, “that he shall certainly be taken to your killing king
to be disposed of.”
He got to his feet then, unraveling, really, until she had to stare up at him. That was unnecessary. She got to her feet as well.
His eyes narrowed. So did hers.
“Sit down,” he said. “Have you a blade?”
She tapped her thigh.
“I thought as much. I shall go see how things stand. You will wait here. I will be back, but should anything happen, if I do not return before that idiot falls off his chair”—he gestured to a linen-capped merchant so sopped with ale, the prediction would take but a few moments to be realized—“make your way down Fishamble—mind the gutters—to the gates. Do not wait to see our quarry, they’ll have already passed through.”
He shoved a handful of coins into her palm. “For the porters,” he explained grimly. “They do not open the gates after dark out of kindness.”
“But this is far too much—”
“If you do not spot our quarry on the road, doubtless they stopped, as I expect them to, at the Goat, a small inn on the eastern road.”
“But—”
“Mention my name to the innkeep; you will be seen to.”
“But—”
“Stop talking,” he ordered, and leaned over the table until his scarred, perfect mouth was far too close to hers. “And if you bark at me again, I will tie you up and make you howl in a way you’ve never dreamt of, Breton lass.”
They were leaning that way, each half across the table, staring at each other, angry and aroused—at least Eva was; Jamie’s face revealed little—when the door of the tavern squeaked open, then slammed shut. She tore her gaze away; habit too well formed, from too many years of running and hiding.
In this case, as in so many others, it saved her life.
The men who’d kidnapped Father Peter had just walked into the tavern.
In other circumstances, this would have been a stroke of good fortune. As it was, lit by torchlight, Eva was clearly visible, and that was a stroke of remarkably bad fortune, since these men had seen her before, as she stood staring in horror when they dragged Father Peter by her, unconscious between their arms.
If they saw her now, they would recognize her. Then they would take her. Mayhap kill her. And Father Peter would be lost.
And Gog . . . her throat closed up at the thought of her all-but-brother in all this madness, Roger, barely fifteen, waiting for her in the woods outside the City. What would Gog ever do without her?
She slowly shifted her gaze back to Jamie in wedged degrees, like the pointed crest of a sundial. The sound of bootheels hitting packed earth thumped inside her head with each pump of blood. Trembling rippled through her in the way of a river, with fierce currents, fear and fury mingling as they so often did, so that she could equally run or attack and not know which until she was already doing it.
But in this moment, like a hand reaching out with a gift, came a new idea: Kiss him.
And so she did.
Four
They were each leaning half across the table, staring, angry and aroused—at least Jamie was; Eva simply looked murderously intent—when she put her hands on his shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed him.
He went still. Her lips skidded over his, exerting no more pressure than breath itself.
“What are you doing?” he said, but he kept his voice low, and he did not pull away.
Her lips formed whisper-words of reply against his mouth, making him acutely, infuriatingly aware of her as an object of unadulterated lust.
“They are here,” she whispered. “The squinty-eyed men.” Her slim hands gripped his shoulders more tightly. “I do not think they would like to see my face again.” She trailed her mouth over his, delivering small, miniature kisses from one end of his lips to the other, as if his mouth were a track she was skipping along.
“What do you mean ‘again’?” he demanded, but he asked it against her lips.
Their eyes met, their heads tipped back slightly, their lips barely a breath apart.
“I am of the belief that they saw me. For a moment only, but this is something that would knock on even their silly skulls. They will say, ‘Why is she here, when she was there?’ and I will have no answer for them.”
Jamie shifted his gaze. A thick-chested man behind the counter was speaking to the brutes, then pointed toward the door next to their table.
“I suppose you cannot do something terrible just now, such as poke out their eyes?” she asked, sounding desperate.
“No,” he said in calm, measured voice. “That would draw attention.”
Eva swallowed. “Indeed.”
Then he moved, startling her, which was odd as they were already so close. He splayed his fingers and shoved them deep into her hair. Then he tilted her face up to his.
Leather. Night air. Cold steel. Masculine muskiness. He was all these, swirling together like smoke. Then he bent his head and kissed her.
It was a very definite thing, this shifting of who was kissing whom. No longer was she perpetrating the act. He had taken over, leading her down his dangerous path, and it was all hot, breathy kisses, and broad, competent hands on her hips, and . . . fire.
Burning, heated fire roiled in her groin, and so she followed him as if he were a shepherd. Let him lower their bodies back down to the bench, let him ravish her with lips that moved like dancing light over hers, so soft she had to inhale them to be sure they had occurred.
He tipped his head to the side, thumb by her jaw, long fingers brushing the hollow under her ears. He was moving breath and skillful, sinful lips, washing her through like sun into the water. Why not simply press his lips against hers, as she’d seen others do? As she wanted him to do. Why . . . this?
Oh, because of this.
He licked her. Slid the tip of his warm, wet tongue across her panting lips—when had she begun panting?—and sent a dizzying cord of heat through her body.
And there she was, orphaned in a tavern, bereft of anything restraining. She went mad. She slid her hand over the worn surface of the bench, warm from his heat, moving ever closer to him, until the tips of her fingers brushed the edge of his hard thigh.
His kiss never wandered, his devotion to her lips never faded, he simply swept up her hand and pressed it to his chest, spreading her fingers out with this thumb. She was the one who started to slide it down his chest, the one whose head started spinning, the one who, suddenly and for no earthly reason, felt like crying. Felt like crawling inside this kiss.
One hand slid a bold route south to her waist, pushing under her cloak, leather glove tugging on the worn fabric of her tunic, pulling it tight against her breasts. Hot, competent masculine hand, now making her reconsider this reckless approach to taverns and men with sunlight kisses.
Then, without warning, his hands fell away. That was all. He simply removed his hands and stopped touching her.
Eva felt as if she’d been flung backward.
She tugged on the bodice of her tunic. The laces felt highly constraining. The sleeves were far too tight—who had hemmed them? Oh, yes. She had. The collar strangulated. The thread, old and worn, scraped like teeth against her wrists.
So much for alehouses and kisses. She was done with them.
Jamie’s rock-hard body shifted beside her. “They have left.”
“I know that,” she managed to say in a choked murmur. She’d known nothing of the sort.
The broad shoulders she’d clasped so . . . so . . . wantonly, dipped forward as he got to his feet for a second time.
“You will stay here,” he said grimly, his voice back to gravelly, his eyes back to hard, as if they hadn’t shared . . . anything. “I will go see how things stand.”
“And if I do not wish to ‘stay,’ like the dog you have left behind?” she inquired coldly.
He considered her with equal coldness. “Do you wish to have me tie you up like one?”
She gasped. “You would not.”
He leaned in and sent his dangerous, arousing breath by her ea
r. “Do not tempt me to prove all the awful things I can do, Eva. Chivalry died in my heart a long time ago. Do not try me.”
He straightened and strode to the door. He swung it open, creaking thing that it was, and considered the street like a man used to surveying deserted streets. He did not look at all like a man who admired churchmen’s work.
He glanced back. “I shall return.”
BUT he didn’t. Because he couldn’t.
He headed for the quay, his fury honed to a cold, biting edge. Eva’s kiss had stopped him as effectively as a board to the skull: he’d simply gone down.
Worst of all, he’d known it. Somewhere inside, he’d known he was going down. Chosen her kiss over his quarry.
His fury dropped a few more degrees, into the realm of icebergs. Grimly he yanked his mind back to the matter at hand: Peter of London.
Retrieve the priest. Then ride away from the woman with gray eyes and stories of red, hot vineyards. Away from reckless, panting kisses that made him, for the first time in his life, choose to forget his mission.
EVA watched the draped, drunken Englishmen absently. Getting Father Peter out of London was supposed to have been a simple thing, a matter of the heart and a few blessed moments. Instead, she was balled up in waiting, colluding with a dangerous man. An absent man. She sat up straight. Absent for too long.
He wasn’t coming back.
She slowed her suddenly quickened breath. “There is no time for panic,” she murmured, but already her mind wanted to spin away like a top, into all the awful repercussions of failure. One needed thinking at such hours, not the panic of spinning tops. She opened her mouth and took a breath. It dried her lips. Think. Think.
At her last sight of the squint-eyed men, when Jamie had refused to pop out their eyes, they been speaking with two other men, both having the weathered, suspicious, capable look of seamen.
One was gone, but the other still stood there, tipping a tankard to his mouth. Upon closer inspection of his bearing and the manner in which others treated him, Eva realized he must be a captain. The squints had been purchasing passage from him.
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